GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Chance of showers, unusual warmth. Just for a day, but there's warm air that came in behind last night's warm front, and it'll stick around until a cold front moving in today—hence the showers—chases it away. Chance of rain this morning and early afternoon, probably some windiness, and a slight chance of a thunderstorm. Temps hitting the mid or upper 50s before dropping overnight to the lower 30s. Fun, huh?So as we sit here at the edge of stick season, let's look back. That's what photographer Jim Block's doing in his latest blog post, which covers autumn in the region between late September and late October: alphabetically by town, from Canaan to Woodstock (with stops at E, H, L, and several other letters in between), along with an entire section on birds (do not miss the ring-necked pheasant). One thing: Colors may have seemed muted this fall, but boy, it was still beautiful out there.Dartmouth faculty letter: College staff underpaid, over-stretched. Since 2004, reports Frances Mize in the Valley News, the college has grown by over 1,000 students and 186 faculty, but has lost 105 staff in Arts and Sciences and 124 employees overall. The result, says history prof Pamela Voekel: "These are people that are really good at their job, and are being driven to the breaking point.” Some 250 faculty members and postdocs last month raised the issue of staff numbers and pay in a letter to the administration, Mize reports; a subset of them will meet President Sian Beilock and others next week.Pre-chain stores, you'd get your cheese custom-cut from 40-pound wheels and might even get help in French or Polish. Grocery shopping back in the early '50s was still done at "venerable general stores and neighborhood-scale mom and pop establishments," writes Steve Taylor in the VN, as he looks back at how it's evolved. Stores that usually carried their owners' names—Sharky's, Plummer's, Al's—started making room for A&P and First National, while some small independents banded together with Associated Grocers of New Hampshire; then came the small supermarkets, then the big ones, then...Suspect in Brattleboro arson case becomes latest Springfield prison death. Dennis Mayotte, 37, of N. Springfield, had been in custody since Oct. 26 on charges that he set fire to Gouger's Market in the southern VT town, as well as on theft charges at various other Brattleboro stores. The VT State Police on Sunday announced they'd begun an investigation into his apparent death by suicide. Mayotte is the 11th person in state custody to die this year and the seventh at Springfield.As the climate continues to change, new trees could thrive in northern New England; some biologists believe they may need a hand. Trees can cast seeds from one- to three-tenths of a mile, writes Li Shen in Sidenote, but "the northward march of climate change is happening at four to six miles per year." Some species we know—black ash, balsam fir, eastern cottonwood—probably won't adapt. Others that are more common in southern New England, like bitternut hickory and black birch, might stand a chance, field biologists believe—if increasingly stressed northern forests get some help.SPONSORED: Winter's coming, and you can make a true difference! At Hearts You Hold, the Upper Valley-based nonprofit that supports immigrants, migrants, and refugees by taking the time to ask them what they need, we've been flooded with requests for winter clothing and gear. Some are right here: farmworkers in Orange and Grafton counties who need jackets, boots, blankets, warm pants, and other items to keep them warm while they keep farms running through winter. Hit the burgundy link above or here, pick something to fund, and make a difference now! Sponsored by Hearts You Hold.Out there right now, opossums are ferrying leaves with their tails. Which, Northern Woodlands' Elise Tillinghast points out, are prone to frostbite (along with their ears), so opossums need snug winter nests. Their tails, she writes, are prehensile and essentially serve as fifth limbs. Meanwhile, also out there this second week of November, you can still find some color in wetlands, especially bunchberry and red sphagnum.And if you happen to see some lumpy-looking trees out there... They may have Phomopsis galls, writes Mary Holland on her Naturally Curious blog. The growths, especially visible now that leaves are parting company with deciduous trees, are caused by a fungus in the genus Phomopsis, and begin to form as patches of rough bark. Eventually, Holland writes, they can "range from the size of a pea up to the size of a basketball." It's believed the fungal spores, produced all summer, enter through twig wounds. The galls don't kill trees, but can cause branch die-back.Northern lights over NH. The weekend display was triggered by two coronal mass ejections, and it lit up the night skies from the north to the south. Several people sent in photos to WMUR's u Local NH Facebook group, including:
In independent report, NH teachers take on proposed new school rules. Christine Downing, the curriculum director for the Plainfield, Grantham, and Cornish schools, doesn't mince words about what the once-a-decade rewrite of state rules would mean: "This is a complete dismantling of public schools as we know it in New Hampshire,” she told the Globe's Amanda Gokee (here via MSN) last week, saying they would lower standards, expand privatization, and boost alternatives like the controversial and politically conservative PragerU. The rules' author, Fred Bramante, tells Gokee that he's aiming for a system where learning can happen “anytime, anyplace, anyhow, any case..."VT announces emergency housing rules for winter. From Nov. 15 to Dec. 15, reports VTDigger's Lola Duffort, the state will provide vouchers to people without housing based only on strict, weather-dependent criteria, including temps or wind chills below 20F or temps below 32 with at least a 50 percent chance of precipitation. From Dec. 15 through March 15, vouchers will be handed out in 30-day increments regardless of the actual weather. Housing advocate Brenda Siegel tells Duffort, “It’s horrifying that the administration thinks that it’s OK for people in Vermont to be outside right now overnight."VT literary mag falls victim to VT State U budget cuts. Green Mountains Review has been around since 1987, publishing poetry, fiction, essays, interviews, and the like, but now VTSU has eliminated its $30K budget and its editor-in-chief, Elizabeth Powell, is taking the university system's buyout, reports Seven Days' Hannah Feuer. Students played an important role in the journal, and Powell tells Feuer that part of its importance lay in helping low-income, first-gen students “be part of the literary conversation in Vermont.” The last issue will be in March, unless another institution takes it over."Loneliest sheep" rescued after two years at bottom of cliff. Great Britain, of course, and specifically Scotland, where two years ago a kayaker spotted the sheep at the foot of a steep cliff, assumed it would make its way home—and was horrified 10 days ago to discover it was still there. "For a flock animal that has to be torture," she told The Guardian. Various agencies turned down requests for help, but an Ayrshire sheep shearer saw the coverage, organized some friends, and this weekend they braved the cliff and bodily hauled the sheep—now dubbed Fiona—back to civilization. The amount of wool shorn from Fiona on Sunday has to be seen to be believed.So hey, you, too, could build a personal hoverboard. Or you could if you're Jake Laser, anyway. If you've been following the exploits of the Norwich-raised, LA-based YouTube engineering star, you know he has an unhealthy (if you're his parents) fascination with getting airborne. Taking a leaf from Back to the Future, he turns his mind and skills to getting just a couple of inches airborne—but able to skim over just about any surface. It's partly a lesson in the power of air (see also: magnets and sound waves), but also of patience (it took a couple of years), and the coolness of making self-lacing shoes à la Marty McFly's.The Tuesday Vordle. With a word from yesterday's Daybreak.
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At 1 pm today, the Hanover Garden Club hosts Liz Krieg, former horticulture instructor at VT Tech and founder of Maple Flower Farm in Bethel, talking about "Growing English Roses in the Northeast". As the club writes, roses—especially the highly scented English roses—"are sometimes considered difficult, demanding, and unforgiving. Nothing can be further from the truth!" In-person at the Montshire Museum, and online.
This evening at 6, Community Care of Lyme hosts an online community conversation, "Who Am I? How Do I Know? Does It Even Matter?: The Search for Personal Identity". In this talk, Philip Kinsler, a retired clinical psychologist and psychiatry prof at Geisel, will tackle some of the toughest questions there are—like, how we know who we are, what happens when we don't, and whether there's a process people go through that helps produce a firm sense of self.
Also at 6 this evening, the Norman Williams Public Library's Liza Bernard will sit down with writer Joni Cole to talk about "the stories behind the stories" that make up Cole's new book of essays, Party Like It’s 2044: Finding the Funny in Life and Death. Like, how Vlad the Impaler may be a distant cousin, and power trips, insulting birthday cards, and why writers hate Amazon.
At 7 pm, Still North Books & Bar and Dartmouth's English department host independent Russian journalist Elena Kostyuchenko reading from and talking about her new memoir, I Love Russia: Reporting from a Lost Country. For 17 years, Kostyuchenko reported for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta (until it was shut down last year) on conflicts, crime, human rights, and other issues. She covered Crimea, the 2004 siege of a school in Beslan in which 300 people died, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and much more. She now lives in exile in Germany. "It’s easy now to think of Russians as aliens who have morals and values that are not like yours, but the truth is that we are very similar," she told the Washington Post recently. "But our country grew fascism inside its belly." At Still North.
Tomorrow night's Handel Society performance of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana in Rollins Chapel is sold out, but this evening at 8 conductor Filippo Ciabatti is leading an open rehearsal in Rollins, and tickets are still available through the Hop.
The Tuesday poem.
My son as a child sayingGodis anything, even a little stone in the middle of the road, in Florida.YesterdayNancy, my friend, after long illness:You know what can lift me up, take me right out of despair?No, what?Anything.
— "A Little Stone in the Middle of the Road, in Florida" by
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The Hiking Close to Home Archives. A list of hikes around the Upper Valley, some easy, some more difficult, compiled by the Upper Valley Trails Alliance. It grows every week.
The Enthusiasms Archives. A list of book recommendations by Daybreak's rotating crew of local booksellers, writers, and librarians who think you should read. this. book. now!
Daybreak Where You Are: The Album. Photos of daybreak around the Upper Valley, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the US, sent in by readers.
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